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FIRST
PERSON: INFOSYS CITY
Technopolis
Just
outside Bangalore one of India's best-known IT companies builds the world's
largest software complex
Text By
Stephen David
Photographs By Bandeep Singh
 As
I stand within Infosys City's W-shaped food court-part of the eponymous
nerve-centre of what is perhaps India's best-known information technology
(it) company-Senior Vice-President Phaneesh Murthy proudly tells me that
the two pieces that form the W are the largest single shell structures
in the country. Then, with a deliciously wicked smile that can only be
described as the revenge of the nerd, he adds, "It took 400 quadratic
equations to decide on the exact shape of the hyperbolic paraboloid that
is each shell."
I gulp.
As if to keep me company, so do the 1,700 Infoscions who are swallowing
their dosas, pizzas, breasts of butter chicken at their spanking new workplace
30 km from Bangalore. It's lunch time at what is, at 44 acres, the world's
largest software services campus, having beaten the EDS facility at Plano,
Texas. As I walk into the second food court Nagawara Ramarao Narayana
Murthy, chairman of Infosys and notorious as a poor eater, takes care
to explain, "Good food is an integral part of development. There
should be no shortage of good food." With two food courts functional
and a third in the works, Narayana Murthy is cooking for the future.
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| From
his minimalist, PC-less office Narayan Murthy gazes at the sprawling
glass and chrome campus |
Yesterday,
however, is where my journey through Infosys City had actually begun.
The first building that greets the visitor is a red, comparatively old
edifice that was once the entirety of the it consultancy's home. Now it's
known simply as the Heritage Building. The new corporate HQ is further
afield, building one of the 19 that have been constructed by Shobha Developers-a
west Asian firm with proven skills in erecting palaces for sheikhs.
As any corporate
historian will tell you, the architecture of business has a tradition
to it. Well over a century ago, the Scots who gave India its jute industry
fashioned their mills in the image of Dundee. The Tatas built a whole
city called Jamshedpur; and created a model for the integrated townships
of the post-1947 public sector. The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay,
turned to the Sanchi stupa for inspiration and so a Buddhist shrine became
the symbol of India's nuclear energy.
The post-industrial
phenomenon that is it industry lends itself to a new creation as it were.
While its contemporaries-I-Flex, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Siemens have
all added to the Bangalore skyline in recent months-are thinking vertical,
Infosys has taken the horizontal path. To some degree the "world's
largest integrated software complex"-formally inaugurated by Nortel
Networks Chief Operating Officer (COO) Clarence Chandran on October 31-is
glass and chrome, thanks to the Greek philosopher-scientists who fathered
mathematics.
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| The
Infosys City library |
The idea
of a vast expanse being conducive to thought and action probably goes
back to Plato's Academy in ancient Athens. The Hellenic amphitheatre that
is a sort of outdoor conference room-in August, Japan's Prime Minister
Yoshiro Mori was introduced to the Infosys family here-is marked by a
steel plaque bearing the facsimile of Pythagoras, the man who gave us
a theorem and a new facet to geometry. "The concept of the food court,"
an executive points out, "is also rooted in Greek architecture."
Aside from
the captive power generation plant-the ups capacity of 3,520 KVA is among
the largest in India-that insulates Infosys City from Karnataka's erratic
electricity syndrome, Narayana Murthy's technopolis is a study in minimalism.
The man himself is known for a spartan persona, his 4,354 engineer co-inmates-of
the 7,925 Infoscians worldwide, 400 are worth over $1 million (Rs 4.6
crore)-share the City with scarcely 20 non-operational staff.
Simple living
and high thinking may be a winning formula for an it powerhouse but even
Infoscians are allowed their indulgences. Each of the 4,500 personal computers-that's
a ratio of 1.03 machines to an engineer-is equipped with a sound card
and music is the intangible fuel that drives Infosys City. "Our basic
credo is: enjoy what you do and do what you enjoy," says Narayana
Murthy, who is a western classical aficionado. With an average age of
24 though, the median musical preference at Infosys is decidedly more
contemporary-Beethoven and Bach have to co-exist with Bon Jovi and the
Beatles.
Music may
propel the creative juices needed to write programs but other fluids have
a free run at Infosys City too. Some 17,000 cups of coffee and tea are
consumed here every day. So is 2.8 lakh litres of water-the wastewater
treatment plant actually has an optimum capacity to cleanse 3.5 lakh litres.
Quenching thirst, soothing the greens, propelling the fountains: water
has many uses in an industrial park but none more unusual it would seem
than filling a swimming pool.
The Greek
philosophers saw a synergy between physical exercise and mental exertion.
Along with aquatics, Narayana Murthy and his techies recognise the virtues
of their Rs 15 lakh gym-the size of half a dozen boxing rings-their mini-golf
course, basketball and tennis courts, billiards and snooker tables and
sauna. To complete the health resort feeling, there's a touch of Amsterdam
to internal transport. If you're not up to walking, you're free to borrow
any of the 130 Hercules MTX bicycles parked on the campus. When he was
here, James D. Wolfensohn, the World Bank president, preferred being shown
around in a mini-golf cart.
It's already
5.15 p.m. and I see Infoscians log off for the day. As Narayana Murthy
hitches a ride home in coo Nandan Nilekani's Ambassador-the big man's
Opel Astra is under repair-my walk down Silicon Alley is over. I'm not
alone in my experience. In the past few weeks, Infosys City has been inundated
by visitors. Heads of government, IAS probationers, a French TV crew,
Chinese journalists have all come calling in an almost ritualistic salutation
to Bangalore's newest it shrine. Like them, I too have become a pilgrim
to this temple of post-modern India.
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